"Needless remake; worth it for Naomi Watts, but then what film isn't?"

'The Ring' is at least the second remake of the 1998 Japanese big hit 'Ringu' (how big a hit? Let's say 'Ringu' was in Japan what 'The Blair Witch Project' was here). Korea remade it first, three years ago, as 'The Ring Virus,' and 'Ringu' itself has been sequelized and prequelized (it was also a remake itself -- the story was done for Japanese TV in 1995).

Now along comes Hollywood, ever late to the party, to weigh in with its own take on the material, which cries out for a master of illusion/delusion like Brian De Palma. I mean, here's a story about a killer videotape -- you watch it, then die seven days later -- and you can't help wondering what De Palma would've done with it (turn it into a dark comedy, most likely). Instead, we get Gore Verbinski, the master of horror who gave you MouseHunt and The Mexican.

Verbinski -- who also did clean-up work on last year's Time Machine remake when its director faltered -- has proven himself, if not a Howard Hawks jack of all genres, at least a competent hack who'll take any script Hollywood kicks his way. The script here, adapted by Ehren Krueger (fast squandering the early promise he showed with Arlington Road), could've used more kicking; it adds nothing in particular to the material that terrified Japan. Tackling his first horror film, Verbinski is irrepressibly of the flash-cut-booga-booga school: show something weird for a split-second while the soundtrack goes "EEEEEK" (in anticipation of the eek in the audience, no doubt). Some of it does the job -- i.e., works on the level of dumb motor scares -- but the content of the deadly videotape, which is supposed to freak us out beyond all sense, inspires one cynic in the film, and at least one in the audience, to snicker "That's very student-film."

This Ring has something the others didn't, though: Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller, the reporter trying to get to the bottom of the video mystery. Her teenage niece (Amber Tamblyn), along with three friends, watched the tape and died a week later; Rachel watches it and somehow doesn't laugh (honestly, it reminded me of nothing so much as Illeana Douglas' pretentious short film in Ghost World; the tape in the Japanese version was quieter, subtler, and spookier). Realizing she's on a deadline, Rachel and her ex-husband (Martin Henderson) get to work on the video and the various secrets it may or may not disclose. They'd better hurry, because their young son (David Dorfman) has also watched the tape.

I first noticed Watts in the much-maligned (why? it's fun enough) Tank Girl, where, as the bashful Jet Girl, she instinctively covered her mouth when she smiled until Lori Petty told her there was no need to hide such a pretty smile. I could've told her that, but we didn't see much more of Watts until her acting marathon in Mulholland Drive; now she graces a Hollywood remake marketed to pull in teenagers looking for the next Blair Witch, and she's much the best reason to see it. (Well, that and an impressive scene involving a horse gone berserk.) Even in this overproduced claptrap, Watts gives solid evidence of a bright future in engagingly flawed women; I most enjoyed her smaller moments, like the way she shoos her editor away when she's on the phone, or when she snatches a teenage girl's cigarette -- not out of motherly disapproval, but to light her own.

The Ring, in any version, is locked into its portfolio of scares and revelations (though what Verbinski does with the bodies of the tape's victims is inspired, and rhymes with the device of the victims' distorted pre-death photographs better than in the original). Hideo Nakata's film was unabashedly old-school, and it benefited from its measured, meat-and-potatoes style; it only got weird when it was playing for keeps. This Ring keeps strobing us with weirdness -- deathly afraid the young audience will fall asleep, maybe -- and so its climax, in which the animating spirit of the video reveals itself, comes off as just another eek!

Instead of insinuating its way into your night thoughts, the way the original does, the remake simply tries too hard to be terrifying. Horror audiences are a tough room; you don't get points for trying.